Lip products, such as lipsticks and lip glosses, are used to impart color and shine to the lips. Most of these conventional lip products are mixtures of waxes, oils, and colorants. A notable drawback to these products is the tendency of the color to transfer from the lips onto a substrate that comes into contact with the lips, including napkins, fingers, clothes, drinking glasses, and the like. Not only does this transfer soil the substrate, but also reduces the vibrancy and durability of the lip products. The user is therefore forced to reapply the product to maintain the desired color and shine. Numerous other cosmetics such as mascaras and foundations, hair products such as temporary colorants, and personal care products such as sunscreens suffer from similar issues with transferability of their colorants or actives.
Efforts to resolve this issue within the field of lip products have been frustrated by trade-offs in increased wear at the expense of comfort and shine. However, some success in imparting longer-wear and transfer resistance to lip products has been achieved through the use of film forming polymers which act to fix the colorants at the site of application and reduce transfer of the product from the lips.
The use of maleic anhydride co-polymers as film formers is known in the art. U.S. Pat. No. 6,492,455 to Nadolsky discloses the use of co-polymers with maleic anhydride functional groups and amine functional polymers as a heat cured coating within cosmetics. The use of maleated olefin copolymers as fixatives for personal care products such as hair sprays is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,025,501 to Ulmer et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,706,817 discloses a bioadhesive resulting from a cross-linked maleic anhydride polymer gel. Multiple functionalized maleic anhydride/olefin co-polymers as enhanced film-forming agents are disclosed in PCT Application No. PCT/IT06/00661 to Rando et al. In each of the above-mentioned patents and patent applications, the maleic anhydride group is incorporated into the backbone of the polymer.
However, there is a continuing need in the art for cosmetic film formers that impart desired attributes such as long-wear, transfer resistance, shine, and comfort to the integuments to which the cosmetic is applied.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide improved cosmetic and personal care products having film formers which, when applied to the surface of an integument, produce films that are long-wearing yet comfortable and which, when used in a pigmented or colored composition, reduce the tendency of the color to transfer from the surface and maintain the desired gloss of the product.